700w cfl 2700k grow expectations???

i have six plants in a 4'x4'x5' grow tent,with 700w of 2700k cfl, in three gallon grow bags filled with fox farm ocean dirt, supplemented with humbolts nutrients oneness base nute throughout veg n flowering stages, with humbolts "ginormeous" bloom booster used thought the blooming stage. the plants were flowered when about two feet tall. averiging three feet tall now two weeks into bloom. the tallest being almost 40" the seeds were from a local old school lifetime grower, being a sativa strong mix i beleive. the outdoor plants using the same seeds grew betwee 6-8' tall and averaged four or more ozs per plant in mid september in new york. so witht that being said, any opinions on what i shoud expect from theses plant under the 700w of actuall cfl wattage ????

Sativas under CFL's? Even 700 actual watts..


Keep em short, train, LST.. if your lucky you might get a half to a zip a plant first time..

If your lucky.. only way CFL will be effective in a 4x4 space, is to keep em all low. DON'T try growing a 6 ft tall Sativa.. it simply wont be practical compared to keeping them low.


Just thoughts..


I use almost 350 actual watts in a 18 inch by 22 inch space.. and it is just about perfect as long as I keep em below 12 inches tall.

if you are running 700 actual watts of cfl wouldn't it just be better to run a 400 or 600 watt hps? better light penetration, denser nugs, just all around better? whats the reasoning behind not doing it?

yes 700 actual watts, compised of many indivudual 26w bulbs in three different homemade refectors. totals just over 40,000 lumens, and yes i realize a nice 400 or 600 w hps would be better but i built the 4'x'4'x5' box and the lights for under 200, a friend of mine may loan a 400w hps for finishing the buds but i wanted to kno what i could acheive on a tight budget. and im not sure if there sativa, im just thinking there sativa dominant due to the massive stretch there going through int he early stages of budding, anf the fact thats as outdoor plants they were 6-8feet tall and when temps dipped in fall they turned shades of purple. and i have to say there only two weeks into bloom and they look to be very thick sturdy bushy plants, i topped half of them.removed all the lowed branches that wont get ample light and some even have four heads. all have started many dominNT bud sites.

I ran around 700w of CFLs and ended up with around .51 g/kWh. Averaged just under a zip a plant in my 388w CFL grow - 6 plants and 5.4oz in 2.5 months.

what kind of seeds did u use? u say u got .51 gs dry per watt? im using 700 watts. right now, all running at once, almost doubling your 388, i ahve them in a 3x3 space , each square foot recieving 4444 lumens. and i vegged for about six weeks, and plan on blooming for 9, so thats just over 3.5 months, im expecting them to finish in a range between 3 and 4' tall.

You can look at the thread in my signature. The 388 watt grow was a mix of seeds an old grower gave me, not sure specifics. The 700w was from clone. I don't remember strain but it might be stated in the thread. That is .51 grams per kWh. This is not the same as g/w.

I yielded just over .4g/w What people should take into consideration is grams per kilowatt hour (kWh). grams/kWh reflects the total amount of energy used compared to yield versus just the amount of watts run at a time compared to yield.

If you vegged for 6 months under a 1kW and then yielded 1000 grams that would be 1 grams per watt. This would be (30(days/month) x 6(months) x 18(hrs/day on)x 1kWh) for veg + 8(weeks) x 7(days a week) x 12(hrs a day) x 1kWh for flower = 3912 kWh

So you would have managed to get ~.25g/kWh
A three month veg that yielded 1000g would be .43g/kWh
A two month veg yielding 1000g would be .57g/kWh

My first CFL grow I managed 151.6g from 6 small plants in 2.5months (2 week veg 8 week flower) using 290 kWh (120w veg for 2 weeks + 388w flower for 8 weeks. That is .52g/kWh.

Yes these are dry weights. I would recommend a scrog when vegging that long and using CFLs.

Switch NUTES!

Take it from me, after losing SEVERAL crops to newbieness and this nute. Oneness is NOT a TRUE one part. It also REQUIRES, and they dont tell you this, SEA-CAL and SEA-MAG, also Humboldt products, or your plants will develop magnesium, sulfur, and calcium def. A total rip off. And oneness sucks for flowering too.

Don't use FF, use Roots Organic. Much better.

If you had the same plants go outside six to eight feet tall with those yields like you said, expect maybe 1/4 as much if even. The sun puts out 1400 watts per square meter. Makes for a lot more outdoor yield.

Your best bet with cfl's for lumens are the 55w t5ho's http://www.lightbulbemporium.com/proddetail.asp?prod=20590

at 4800 lumens per bulb you could get near 40,000 lumens with just 440w of power. Far more efficient.

I'm going to be using 6 of these in a 2x2ft area with great ventilation.

if i upgrade im going 600w hps. and i was thinkin more cuz i see ppl on here all the time with their ghetto rigged rubbermade grow boxes with only a few hundred w of cfl , if that. and they pulll 2-4 ounces out of that. i kno only time will tell but i was looking for some opimions

just out of interest how did this end up?

nothing more annoying than researching something, reading through and finding it abandoned months ago!!

5 years later its still lingering and being researched....